The Palestinian Feminist Movements between Nationalism, Secularism, and Islamic Identity (Nissaa ala taqato Attoroq: Al-Harakaat Al-Niswiya Al-Falastiniya bayna Al-Wataniya, Al-Ilmaniya, wa Al-Howiya Al-Islamiya) (review)

In her book, The Palestinian Feminist Movements between Nationalism, Secularism, and Islamic Identity, Islah Jad examines the National Palestinian Authority's (NPA) impact on women and feminist movements from a gender perspective in the post-Oslo period—the era of state building. The study scrutinizes the problems associated with shifting roles of the national liberation movement, from mobilizing society in a historical struggle to becoming a bureaucratic state in need of different roles, structures, and discourses. Further, it studies the challenges facing feminist movements engaged in the tasks of national struggle and nation-building. These movements have to maintain the older agenda of mobilization and liberation, as well as a new agenda that calls on the state to ensure women's rights and equality in conditions that threaten the Palestinian state. Among other arguments that the study makes is the suggestion that secular feminist movements' transformation into nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has weakened their capacity to recruit and mobilize women. Jad also stresses that the weakening and dismantling of the feminist movement need to be put in the larger context of the formation of the NPA after the Oslo Accord and the dominant belief that it was a period of state-building, despite the Israeli occupation. In consequence, the NPA's failed attempt to establish itself as a state still under occupation, dismantling the political structure of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and its factions while allowing Islamist forces to thrive and gain influence. After the NPA was set up, professional-women NGOs replaced disbanded grassroots organizations.

The book addresses the intersections of colonialism, nationalism, Islamism, and the feminist movement in Palestine. It surveys the formation of the feminist movement within the historical context of the nationalist movement with two different sides—one patriarchal and oppressive, while the other was supportive of women's liberation. Support came especially from leftist parties that had provided space for women to demand equality and develop a feminist consciousness regarding social issues. With such support, especially in the mid-1970s, women succeeded in forming an indigenous feminist movement that combined both national and social liberation, bridging the gaps and differences between middle-class urban women and rural women.

With regard to the impact of the NPA on the feminist movement, it has weakened organizations supported by the masses in favor of NGOs that concentrate on professionalization and given primacy to funders' agendas rather than to those of their members. The author criticizes the women NGOs that espouse a discourse of universal rights, stripped of its social context and completely divorced from national rights. This type of discourse has isolated women and dismantled the old forms of grassroots organizations, and it also contradicts the claim that women NGOs are the only ones capable of representing the interests of women. The fact that these NGOs failed to defend women's interests, and failed to engage them in planning and decision making, refutes the claim that these institutions are tools of participatory development. Their development projects are small, time-constrained, and do not create strong ties with the targeted population, and thus are unable to mobilize the masses and lead to sustainable change. Middle-class professional women were recruited to head these organizations, which claim to defend and help marginalized women; divorced from its context, however, it is these NGOs' discourse that created a gap with women from lower classes, a vacuum that the Islamist feminist movement has sought to fill.

The book also seeks to provide a critical contribution on the thought and orientations of postcolonialism, as well as the binaries adopted by some of those who study Arab societies, including...